Theme: Pressures of Young Adults

The theme of this event revolves around promoting the pressures of young adults- whether it be depression, stress, or peer pressure. The talks could be as creative as you would like- from personal experiences to scientific viewpoints. Although we have a theme, every talk does NOT have to relate to it.

Stone Bridge Middle School
1252 Yardville Allentown Rd
Allentown, New Jersey, 08501
United States

Aarchi Desai

Student

Aarchi is a 9th grader at Allentown High School. She is in all honors courses and participates in several clubs, such as the Business Academy, Science League, class activities, and a singing group called Nightingales. Aarchi is passionate about helping others and creating an environment that is safe for everyone, no matter their race, gender, sexuality, or religion. She would like to address the topic of peer pressure at this event. Aarchi feels that almost every kid goes through peer pressure and believes that it is important to know how to handle and deal with these situations.

Amritha Sypereddi

Student, Fundraiser, Director

Amritha is a 16 year old sophomore from Lawrence High School. Her favorite subjects in school are science and language arts. In science, she is passionate about medicine and chemistry, and has been a member of her school's competitive Science Olympiad team for 2 years. Amritha is also part of the program, Toastmasters, which is a public speaking program that has helped her improve her public speaking skills. Outside of school, Amritha has been an Indian classical dancer for nearly 8 years now. Along with dance, Amritha has also been a part of PureYouth, which is an organization that helps to educate and empower students all over the world through improving the conditions of schools. Amritha is the director of the Lawrenceville branch of this organization. Amritha was able to raise funds through her role in PureYouth to help afford notebooks, desks, bookshelves, a reverse osmosis plant, to construct a stage, and build a dining hall internationally.

Asmitha Sathya

Student, Volunteer, Dancer, Secretary

Asmitha Sathya is currently fifteen years old and is a sophomore at Biotechnology High School. She went to Stone Bridge Middle School and graduated middle school as the valedictorian of her class. On the weekends, she volunteers at CentraState Hospital along with at a nonprofit organization close to her family called VT Seva. VT Seva works to help rebuild underprivileged communities. Currently, she spends most of her time at dance class, traveling, or at her favorite thai restaurant. She helps out in dance classes by teaching younger children and performs in many productions. She completed her Kuchipudi Rangapravesam, which is a dance graduation, at the age of fifteen. Asmitha has been secretary of the student council for the past two years and enjoys helping out with freshman orientation and info sessions. Asmitha hopes to go in to the biomedical field when she grows up and will always keep pursuing her dreams.

Calvin Butts

Entrepreneur, Senior HealthCare Media Strategist, Board Member

Calvin's passions outside the office include: playing golf, spending time with his family, networking, and building relationships. He would like to touch base on the topic of "Being Your Authentic Self." He believes that you have to believe in yourself and really own who you are. Calvin grew up with ADHD and was able to go against doctors' suggestions and end up achieving so much more. Now he is a part of multiple boards, multiple businesses, multiple organizations, and has even started multiple businesses. Calvin found that if he embraced the need to be involved in several things, he could find success and find a good balance. He encourages everyone to be themselves and also understand who they are. He believes that everyone has a unique diversity to bring to an organization, school, corporation, and community.

Danielle Shoots

CEO, Financial Executive, Public Speaker, Leader

Danielle is the Founder and CEO of the Daily Boss Up, a digital start up that provides coaching, mentoring and consulting for leaders in every stage of their career. Danielle’s time as a financial executive began at the age of 26, when she was named CFO for the largest division of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. Mostly recently Danielle served as the Vice President of Finance and Business Operations for the West Division of Comcast, managing a billion-dollar capital portfolio and a team of sixty employees located in seven states. In 2017, Danielle was named to the Denver Business Journal’s 2017 40 under 40 and in 2019 she was named one of the top 25 Most Powerful Women in Business by the Colorado Women’s Chamber of Commerce. Danielle also received the 2018 Woman of the Year Award for her work with youth in the community. Danielle’s experiences as the youngest executive and leader during most of her career gives her unique insight into leadership dynamics.

Donna Conroy

Wife, Mother, Scientist, Entrepreneur

Donna and her husband, Mike, have 4 children. She has been trained by Beth Rogers as a speaker when she worked in Corporate and needed to speak in groups of 5000+. Donna enjoys skiing, paddle boarding, yoga, and cooking. Donna and her husband own a medical communications company. Together, they have built and continued to fine tune an AI assisted system that finds answers to challenging medical questions. Donna's desire for medical advancements that change the world today is balanced with the work of raising her children for a better future. She believes that dealing with the pressures inflicted on individuals, while understanding and respecting the pressures young adults face on a day-to-day basis today places most families in a pressure cooker environment. Donna would like to identify the most common pressures that parents see and what she thinks are the most common pressures young adults face today.

Esha Kode

TEDxYouth Organizer

Janeece Freeman Clark

Producer, Director, Artist Educator, Artist Citizen

Janeece is the leader of the Musical Theater Department in the New Jersey Performing Arts Center. There, she has produced and directed pieces with writers such as: Mary Pope and Will Osborne (Magic Treehouse), and Murray Horwitz (Ain't Misbehavin'), and music directors Seth Rudetsky, Allen Toussaint, and Ray Chew (American Idol). After many years of prepping a diverse body of performers for the musical theater industry, she felt there was a missing piece - SERVICE. In an attempt to assist artists on their journey of not only developing their talents as performers, but also as Artist Citizens, in 2015 Janeece co-founded Vanguard Theater Company (VTC). dedicated to D.R.E.A.M.: Diversity, Reciprocity, Education, Awareness, and Mentorship. Vanguard uses theater to break down walls and stereotypes, all the while empowering artists to use their art for activism. As an actress, Janeece appeared in Urinetown: The Musical on Broadway, as well as many other productions.

Jessica Wong

Student

Jessica loves making other people smile whether it’s through performing in musicals and plays or volunteering in her local community. She is passionate about making a difference in the lives of others by advocating for those who can’t and being there for those in need. Jessica also participates in pageants as she feels they provide a way for women to empower themselves.

Mackenzie Amyx

Student, Blogger, Author, World Traveler

From a young age, Mackenzie has felt the pressure to have a voice and build a platform. She believes that this pressure came from her Dad, who is the most ambitious man she knows. As a result, Mackenzie started writing short fictional stories and publishing to her blog at the age of 12. By 13, she published her first book as part of a national writing competition. Mackenzie has also studied at the University of Chicago and UC Berkeley as part of an on campus gifted program. She has also passed the ABRSM piano exam with honors and sang at the Carnegie Hall with the San Francisco Girls Chorus. This year, Mackenzie has launched her own podcast, "Gen Z with Mackenzie," on Amazon Alexa. Her parents guided her in all these directions, but as she becomes a young adult, she is struggling to find her her own voice and motivation, while being constantly reminded that time is running out. Mackenzie would love to talk about her ongoing journey!

Mark Guterl

Father, Husband, Educator

Mark is the Superintendent of Schools in the Upper Freehold Regional School District, Allentown, NJ. He is passionate about education, innovation and mental wellness. Mark believes wholeheartedly that "Kids don't care what you know until they know you care." He is the Dad of three girls and husband to his wife, Jessica. He loves public speaking and is a huge fan of his family!

Meghan Gajula

Student

Meghan is a freshman at Montgomery High School. Learning beyond her academics is her passion- whether it is doing 4 years of robotics and consistently going to state competitions or sending an experiment to the International Space Station to explore microgravity. Above all, Meghan enjoys spreading all her knowledge to her community, which she does both by mentoring kids in programming and by working at Kumon. Meghan has realized that her Indian parents' expectations for her are a lot different than the expectations of other non-Immigrant parents. She asks the question "Is this an opportunity for us to learn more at an age where we can learn more or is it just added stress on top of an already stressful academic life? Will their expectations for us help guide us to a better future or will their pressures end up putting us behind?"

Melissa Ruiz

Public Speaker, Advocate, Connector, Leader

Melissa currently works for a company called Swift Kick, based in NYC. She is a public speaker and works with teams and their leaders to create cultures of connection. Melissa used to be a competitive dancer, theater girl, and a pageant girl. Recently, Melissa realized that she is usually the connector between social groups that she was a part of. In doing so, she was building a "family." Melissa grew up with a single mom and a brother who was 12 years older than her. Connecting with different social groups gave Melissa an opportunity to find her people or tribe. Melissa would like to stress to today's youth that the people that they are meeting now and forming friendships with could very well be the people that they turn to in their happiest and saddest and hardest of moments as adults. Melissa wants to spread the value of humanity that constantly surrounds us as it sometimes gets ignored.

Michael Pedowitz

Student

Michael is a junior at Allentown High School. In addition to multiple AP courses and 6 Honor Societies, he is also part of his school's newspaper, club, Model UN team, and Academic team. Michael really enjoys astronomy, physics, U.S. history, and politics. He loves spending time with his family and going to Disney with them. Michael would like to talk about "Mickey Mouse" at this event. He believes that Mickey Mouse is pertinent to all age groups because of the type of role model he could be to them today. When Mickey Mouse was created back in the 20s, he signified a role model of how kind, generous, and loving an individual could be to children who really needed to see that in the world they were growing up in. Micheal believes that today's role models are not really role models as they are TV personnel or cartoon characters who do not exactly show children how they can be successful in the world.

Miryam Utset

Mental Health Advocate, Executive Board Member

Miryam is married to Edgar Utset (going on 15 years coming up on May 15th). Edgar and Miryam have 2 beautiful children, Sofia (12) and Ben (11). Miryam is the daughter of 2 Chilean immigrants that came to the U.S. in the 60s. She studied Psychology in college, and worked at Prudential where she met her husband. Miryam had many roles/titles - one was managing a staff of over 60 people in both NJ and PA. Currently, Miryam is a stay at home mom, executive board member of our PTA, advocate for mental health in our district.

Ria Philip

Student

Ria is a current junior. She is very active in several clubs, such as Math League, Science Club, 4H, and she is involved in her grades’ student council. Ria is passionate about helping other people and hopes to make a positive impact wherever she goes.

Sophia Ziajski

Student, Founder, Advocate, Leader

Sophia is a current senior at The Academy of Allied Health and Science. Throughout her middle school and high school years, Sophia has developed a passion for working with individuals who have special needs. As a result, as a junior in high school, Sophia created a non-profit organization entitled Friends Connect Foundation. This organization provides free social programs designed specifically for teenagers with special needs because they are in an underserved population in her area. Sophia would love to share how she has an opportunity to cater to the special needs community and the impact that this has on youth individuals at this TEDx event! She wants to emphasize that the youth do have a voice and that they are capable of making a difference in their community in both a small and large-scale way.

Susan Dean

Advocate, Soft Skills Specialist, Leader

Dr. Susan's passion is to develop others with a special focus on soft skills. This passion of hers was drawn out of an experience that she had managing a warehouse in central New Jersey that was a third party consolidation warehouse servicing WalMart. At that site, Dr. Susan and her team employed formerly incarcerated individuals who came from very rough areas, such as Trenton, Camden, and Newark. These individuals displayed a need for soft skills and Dr. Susan worked very hard with the team there to develop them and those skills in them. As a result, she went back to school, and studied for 5 years to get a doctorate. During this time, she looked at successful soft skill training strategies. Her overall passion is focused on developing these skills in others and then just personal development in general, particularly for those in lower socioeconomic status.

Tracy Reed

Assistant Director, Coordinator, Presenter

For over 20 years, Tracy Reed has worked with students and professionals from around the world to see themselves from a new and positive perspective. She calls these moments of growth “Butterfly Magic.” When a person can see themselves in a brighter light, they open their mind to all the possibilities life has to offer. Tracy has led travel over 25 leadership trips to help create this “Magic” for students and colleagues. Tracy is currently the Assistant Director of Student Engagement and Leadership at Penn State Abington. In her 20+ years as a Higher Education Growth Professional, she has produced, coordinated, presented and facilitated over 1,000 events, training programs, and leadership presentations. When she isn’t pursuing her passion for camping, dancing, and singing; Tracy loves the opportunity to present and engage with individuals, organizations, and companies looking to develop and grow personally and professionally.